Ted Grant

The Colonial Revolution and Civil War in South Yemen

Written: 1986 Transcription/Markup: Emil 2001Proofread: Emil 2001

The civil war in South Yemen illustrated the processes that are taking place in the
colonial countries today, the processes of the colonial revolution. At the same time it
shows the degeneration of Stalinism and the peculiar character of proletarian bonapartism,
i.e. a move to military-police dictatorship on the basis of state ownership of the means
of production, distribution and exchange.

The processes were shown clearly during the course of the revolution in South Yemen
since 1967. The overthrow of British imperialism, which was forced to retreat from Aden
and South Yemen because of the movement of the masses, marked the beginning of the
revolution in South Yemen. However on the basis of bourgeois democracy, with the crisis
which exists of world capitalism, a crisis above all in the colonial areas, it was clearly
revealed that the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois democrats were incapable of taking action
against landlordism and carrying the bourgeois democratic revolution to a conclusion.

Thus the most revolutionary wing of the revolutionary forces was compelled to take
power into its own hands. But in order to eliminate feudalism and landlordism they were
compelled to go further and eliminate capitalism or rather those elements of capitalism
that existed in South Yemen at that time.

South Yemen declared itself a "Marxist" state, i.e. in reality it was a
military-police-bonapartist dictatorship, basing itself on a nationalised economy but with
the support of the overwhelming majority, especially of the active population. The Yemeni
revolutionaries had as their model the revolution in Cuba, in Russia and of course in
China.

But South Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world. Despite covering an area
equal in size to Britain, it only has a tiny population of two million. It had few natural
resources, although now apparently oil has been discovered straddling the border between
South and North Yemen. Clearly on the basis of the Yemen economy alone it was not possible
to solve the problems which faced the workers and peasants, i.e. the people of the Yemen.

When the revolution began there were only 127 miles of paved roads in South Yemen, all
but 14 in Aden. Even now the per capita income in South Yemen is little over 350 a year.
Life expectancy averages around 46 years and even today in spite of the Herculean efforts
to abolish illiteracy more than 60 percent of the population is still illiterate.

Another of the problems of the South Yemen revolution is that it is surrounded by
semi-feudal states such as Saudi Arabia, Oman and the Gulf states. Previously it occupied
an important strategic position when half of the oil of the non-Stalinist world flowed
from the Gulf every day. In 1975, 17.5 million barrels of oil, or 41 percent of the oil of
the non-Stalinist world, came through the Straits of Hormuz. Now it is only 15 percent, or
6.5 million barrels of oil everyday. Nonetheless it is still a very important strategic
area because 56 percent of the world's oil reserves still remain in the region of the
Gulf.

However even on the meagre economic basis of South Yemen, with hardly any industry at
all, nevertheless big progress has been made on the basis of the elimination of
landlordism and of capitalism. For example, half the food that is needed in South Yemen is
now grown in the area in spite of the fact that a great part of South Yemen is desert. The
difference that a revolution makes in an area such as this is shown by the fact that in
Djibouti, which has a population of 360,000, 80 percent are unemployed, whereas in South
Yemen unemployment has been completely eliminated.

Classical Stalinist purge

So how did it happen that a civil war should take place between two factions of the
Yemeni Socialist Party, which is the name of the organisation of the Stalinist Communist
Party in Yemen? The facts were that President Ali Nasser Mohammed, tried to eliminate
members of the opposing faction at a specially convened meeting of the eleven-man
politburo on January 13 this year. A detachment of guards opened fire killing Ali Ahmed
Nasser Antar, vice-president and an open opponent of President Nasser Mohammed, Mr Salih
Muslih Fassim, Defence Minister, and Mr Ali Shaiyia Hadi, Head of the Control Commission.
Other opponents of the president were rounded up and some were murdered. President Nasser
Mohammed prepared for the purge of his opponents by issuing leaflets in advance of the
politburo meeting, claiming success in defeating an alleged attempted coup! But, on
January 15 and 16 the middle ranks of the troops swung over to the opposition thus sealing
the fate of Nasser Mohammed. And on January 25 a new government led by Mr Haider Abubaker
Al-Attas was formed.

The ruling elite in South Yemen imitates China, Russia, Cuba and the other deformed
workers' states in carving out privileges for themselves. Fred Halliday who has written a
book on the collapse of the Sultans in South Yemen, noted some changes during a visit in
1979. He reported that "top party officials in Aden have received increased material
privileges in the form of access to restricted consumer goods shops, and the army has
become much more prominent in Yemini life." President Nasser Mohammed, before his
overthrow, was head of state, secretary general of the ruling Yemeni Socialist Party, and
chairman of the Presidium of the SPC, the Supreme People's Council.

On the road of capitalism there is no way out. Society in the Yemen, as in most of the
colonial world at the present time, was at an impasse. Consequently, in a caricatured
form, the process was that of the permanent revolution explained by Trotsky and supported
by Lenin. The Yemen jumped from tribalism to "socialism". They established a
so-called "Socialist Party" with a one-party totalitarian state. How then did
the conflict break out? Like the process in Afghanistan, tribal and other cliques were
jostling for control within the framework of the only legal party, the Socialist Party. In
addition there were differences over policy. Ali Nasser Mohammed, the former President,
tried to compromise with the reactionary state of North Yemen and the feudal capitalist
states of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. This was done with the full support of the Stalinists
in Moscow.

The Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union is trying to arrive at some sort of uneasy
compromise with American imperialism and does not want any movement of the masses in the
Middle East which could cause friction and complications with the US. Therefore they are
opposed to the development of revolution in North Yemen, in Oman, in Saudi Arabia and in
the other countries of the Middle East. Like all the other revolutions in colonial
countries, the revolution in South Yemen took place in spite of and not because of
the existence of Communist Parties and the Soviet bureaucracy.

So there was a struggle inside the Yemeni Socialist Party with one faction opposed to
the attempts on the part of Ali Nasser Mohammed to come to an agreement with North Yemen
and the other reactionary states of the region and to cease to support the revolutionary
movement in these countries.

"Fraternal" clashes

Nasser Mohammed therefore tried the classical methods of Stalinism in launching a purge
on Stalinist lines. No trials, but executions, in reality murders of the top leadership of
the Political Bureau. It was his failure to succeed completely, with only a partial
elimination of his rivals, which led to the outbreak of civil war. Thus in Stalinist
regimes a "fraternal discussion" is carried on with heavy machineguns, tanks,
rifles, armoured personnel carriers, 130 metres artillery, cannon, gunboats and planes!
The deformed workers' states proceed on bonapartist lines rather than on the lines of
workers' democracy. Like the bloody battles between Russia and China, like the bloody
conflicts between China and Vietnam, Vietnam and Cambodia, they show the national and
bureaucratic limitations of the Stalinist regimes.

All these "socialist" countries are dominated by a bureaucratic elite. They
are progressive in so far as capitalism and the feudal remnants of landlordism have been
abolished but there is no real control by the workers and peasants. Only this control
could guarantee the beginning of a transition in the direction of socialism.

Bureaucratic rule results in distortion, corruption and abuse of power. The classical
example was the bloody and infamous terror of Joseph Stalin in Russia. Without the check
of workers' democracy, control by the workers and peasants and now, in an area like South
Yemen, of the tribesmen, the bureaucratic elite takes action against any threat to its
hold by bloody purges. Thus Stalin long before conducted the extermination of the leaders
of the revolution, of the Bolshevik party and of hundreds of thousands of workers who led
the Bolshevik revolution, along with the massacre of the majority of the officer cadres of
the Russian army. This prepared the way for the victories of Hitler in the first stages of
the war of Nazi imperialism against Russia.

Now in South Yemen there is a new government of Mr Haider Abubaker Al-Attas with Salem
Baleh as secretary of the Socialist Party of Yemen. They are the new strongmen who are
giving lip-service to collective leadership, but inevitably the new regime will also
result in the domination of one new "leader". That is the method of proletarian
bonapartism, the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual.

There has been an enormous mumbling and embarrassment at the events in Yemen, on the
part of the British Communist Party and of the hard-liners around the Morning Star.
On January 27, the Morning Star contained an article saying that a meeting of the
Yemeni Socialist Party Central Committee, following the appointment of the new government
of Haider Abubaker Al-Attas, had:

" declared 'the commitment of the Yemen Socialist Party to the ideas of
scientific socialism [!?] and the principles of proletarian internationalism' and it
further called upon the people to 'rally around the party in defence of the country's
national independence and sovereignty.'"

The British Stalinists in common with their mentors abroad, because Moscow in the
beginning was backing Nasser Mohammed, initially succeeded in backing the wrong horse.
However very quickly they changed over to support the winning side. But not a word of
explanation of how it happened, how it could happen under "scientific
socialism", has been given. The Morning Star goes on:

Wringing its hands in anguish at this "disagreement" between
"comrades", the Star reproduced the comments of Pravda of January
24:

"'These events cannot but cause deep regret, especially considering that they are
taking place in a friendly country with the Yemeni Socialist Party at the head.' Noting
democratic Yemen's 'considerable socio-economic successes', the Soviet Communist Party
daily attributes the present problems to 'the traditional existence of many socialist
structures and the tribal disunity of society inherited from past epochs.' They were the
result also of 'subversive action of foreign reactionary, imperialist forces.'"

Although how these had their effect on the regime in Aden is not explained.

Two bureaucratic factions

As a commentary on the events the Morning Star on January 24 reviewed an article
by Nasser Mohammed written well before the civil war in the October 1985 edition of World
Marxist Review:

"In a detailed and frank article, published in World Marxist Review - 'Problems of
Peace and Socialism', the President spoke of 'armchair administration' and attempts to
'belittle the role of the leadership of the party.'

"Writing as general secretary of the Central Committee of the Yemen Socialist
Party and chairman of the presidium of the Supreme People's Council, the president pointed
to clear conflicts in the run-up to the party's congress, which was being planned for the
near future."

The Morning Star continues:

" in the conflict there has been confusion over the cause. Speculation
has ranged from personal rivalries, to tribalism, centralism versus local autonomy,
disputes over the relations between the party and state, as well as over relations with
neighbouring Arab states Democratic Yemen's embassy in London said 'the
causes go back to the heritage of social backwardness,' adding, 'the situation exploded
for purely internal reasons.'

"President Ali Nasser Mohammed's [the overthrown president - EG] article does
confirm that in his view severe political differences were being debated in the country
following the plenary meeting of the party's CC Arguing that the status of the Yemen
Socialist Party differs from any ruling bourgeois party the president said: 'Together with
state authority it represents not a privileged minority but all the working people!'"

This argument has been crushingly refuted by events. Workers' democracy contains the
normal checks and balances whereby decisions will be taken on the basis of a majority
through democratic discussion through the organisation of the revolutionary party itself.
This was the case in Russia before the degeneration of the revolution. However, having
seized power, Stalin declared as early as 1927 that "these cadres [i.e. bureaucrats -
EG] can be eliminated only by civil war ", a statement he then went on to verify
by waging a one-sided civil war against Bolshevism. Now two bureaucratic factions in South
Yemen have tried to crush each other. Certainly elements of the past, personal enmities,
tribal groupings, do loom large in the conflict. But the model for both factions is the
totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe and China, a one-party state with no real
democracy. Backwardness of course made the development of industry and of the economy very
difficult in South Yemen. In the Soviet Union the isolation of the genuine democratic
socialists, of Marxism, arose from the isolation and backwardness of Russia with the
failure of the revolution in other countries. That is why the Marxists, the real
Bolsheviks who reflected the needs and the interests of the working class and the
peasants, and of world socialism, were defeated in the struggle in the Soviet Union.

Now in South Yemen it is a struggle between two bureaucratic cliques. In a poor country
like South Yemen with a small population it is clear that they could not stand on their
own without the support of the other deformed workers' states. In the economy and in
cultural life backward elements still loom large. Low standards of living, cultural
backwardness and actual illiteracy, all these have undoubtedly had an effect. But they are
not the explanation of why the civil war took place in South Yemen.

The Morning Star continues in this long article:

"But although the building of the state apparatus had been completed during the
past few years 'there were weaknesses and negative aspects.' He [the former President,
Nasser Mohammed, now overthrown - EG] went on to talk of 'inflation of personnel [i.e.
bureaucracy - EG], inadequate knowledge of the scientific principles of leadership,
miscalculations in the placing of cadres' bureaucratic propensities in the actions of some
executives and a low level of executive discipline.'"

As Lenin would have observed, what a high-flying Stalinist formula to cover his own
"bureaucratic propensities", "solving" problems by machinegunning
opposition members of the Political Bureau!

"Some executives, he said, were promoted 'not on the basis of objective criteria
but on family-tribal, parochial and other considerations.' These practices, he added,
represented 'a burp of outworn social relations.'"

In reality it was the classical nepotism of Stalinist regimes in all the deformed
workers' states which has reached scandalous levels in the Soviet Union, China and the
other bonapartist workers' states. In South Yemen Nasser Mohammed objected to other
leaders behaving in this fashion while no doubt doing the same thing as far as his own
tribe was concerned!

"In some cases party organisations acted instead of the state apparatus. Attempts
were also made to 'use administrative measures in order to belittle the role of leadership
by the party. Instead of harmony and efficiency there were conflicts, lack of
coordination.'"

Moscow's role

These conflicts were settled by machineguns precipitated by the writer of this article
in World Marxist Review! No doubt had he been replaced the same process would have
taken place for him and his clique of supporters in the Yemeni Socialist Party leadership
and among the bureaucracy.

"The President also claimed that many of the Yemen Socialist Party members were
'still susceptible to influence of non-proletarian, often pre-capitalist ideas and
notions.' In that context he made the point that the party's membership 'has grown visibly
in the past five years to some 30,000. But in the state sector 'the most advanced and
organised contingent of the proletariat - factory workers - remains numerically small.' He
also argued that there was a danger of a breakdown between democracy and centralism - 'not
two different concepts but two sides of one and the same principle.' He went on to warn
that disregard of either is 'fraught with serious consequences. A formal interpretation of
party democracy may generate organisational and ideological looseness, negligence and a
weakening of the party's militancy. On the other hand, excessive centralisation kills
initiative, and gives party work the features of administration and turns party
organisation into a purely executive authority.' Phenomena of this kind, says the
President, 'formalism and armchair administration were to be observed in some Yemeni
Socialist Party organisations' Despite a new social consciousness taking shape 'old
reactionary customs and values still retain their influence, thus reflecting the
social-economic and cultural backwardness inherited from the epoch of colonial slavery,'
he argued."

The Morning Star then goes on to say:

"The tragic events of the past two weeks indicate that the divisions behind some
of these arguments have developed into deep and bitter chasms. [!] But to what extent the
article reflects the reasons behind the conflict will only be known if and when Abdul
Fattah Ismail [who was murdered in the first days of the struggle by the overthrown
president! - EG] makes his position clear."

The mumbling and stammering of the Morning Star hard-liners, taking their cue
from Moscow who originally backed the wrong horse and then switched back to the people who
were victorious, shows how far they are from a Marxist analysis of events. It echoes the
old days of Stalin when the Moscow bureaucracy said "turn" and they turned 180
degrees. This was because of the slavish dependence of the Communist Parties of the world
on Moscow.

The Morning Star goes on to say that "the conflict will delight only the
imperialist camp." No explanation is given of how it could happen in a so-called
democratic state moving in the direction of socialism. However the Observer on
January 19 had the comment:

"The Soviet Union is pursuing a policy of conciliation in the Arab world. It has
encouraged South Yemen to improve relations with all its neighbours and to ditch its image
of a dangerous exporter of revolution."

Aden and South Yemen are important to the Soviet Union as a port and because of their
strategic situation. The Soviet Union has largely replaced colonial Britain, with the
difference that it is a voluntary arrangement between the South Yemeni and the Soviet
bureaucracy. Nevertheless South Yemen is still completely dependent on the Soviet Union.
This did not enable the Soviet Union to prevent civil war. In the beginning the Soviet
bureaucracy was backing President Nasser Mohammed, who in reality was carrying out the
policy of agreements with the other states in full collusion with Moscow.

The peculiar relationship between the superpowers is such that while the USA is an
exporter of counter-revolution, revolutions - even in a caricatured form - are carried out
without the support of Moscow. The Kremlin then is compelled to accept the fait
accompli as it did in the case of Cuba, China and Vietnam. Imperialism is well aware
of this but at a time when relations with Moscow are estranged it conducts demagogic
attacks that Moscow is trying to export revolution. In reality the bureaucracy wants to
arrive at a compromise with imperialism and therefore has no desire to "export
revolution". But whatever the policy of the Moscow bureaucracy and of the Stalinist
parties in the colonial countries they will not be able to prevent the enormous storms and
stresses of revolution which opens up at the present time on three continents.

In Asia, Africa and in Latin America the coming decade will be a decade of revolution.
In some cases where revolutionary Marxism has not got a basis it is possible that new
deformed workers' states could be set up on the model of Cuba, South Yemen, Ethiopia,
Syria, Burma, China and Vietnam. Such regimes would be relatively progressive in the sense
that they were developing the productive forces at a far faster pace than would be
possible under capitalism. In fact under capitalism now the productive forces in the
under-developed world tend to stagnate or even go backward.

No stability in Middle East

The "new" government in South Yemen will in reality be compelled to pursue
the same policy as the old government. It is possible that the leaders of the tendency who
were assassinated by Nasser Mohammed wanted to extend the revolution to Oman, above all to
North Yemen and even to Saudi Arabia. But now with the virtual destruction of Aden -
following the street to street and even window to window fighting - with according to the Morning
Star itself, billions of dollars now needed in Aden for the purpose of reconstruction,
it will be completely dependent on Moscow and therefore the foreign policy of the new
government will be exactly the policy of the old. They will be compelled to try to
conciliate North Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia. However this will only mean an uneasy
"peace" between these countries. The inevitable development of the revolution in
the Middle East and on the Arabian Peninsula will mean that all attempts of this sort will
be in vain. As with Asia, Africa and Latin America, the Middle East also will be an area
of enormous colonial revolution.

Despite the civil war and its destruction the South Yemen revolution will still be a
beacon to the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula and even to the Middle East as well. The
elimination of landlordism, of capitalism and of the power of the sultans and chiefs, will
be an example which will have echoes throughout Arabia whatever the policy of the South
Yemen government might be.

As a result the new rulers of South Yemen will probably consolidate their rule and
perfect a one-party totalitarian state which would not allow for any further opposition to
develop within the framework of the ruling party. Thus the fate of South Yemen is the fate
of all the countries where deformed workers' states have been set up - progressive on the
one hand with the abolition of landlordism and capitalism - but reactionary in the setting
up of one-party dictatorships without democracy for the workers and peasants. The final
fate of South Yemen will be decided during the course of the revolution in Asia, in Europe
and in the industrialised countries of the world.